Establishing oral preference for quinine, phencyclidine and caffeine solutions in rats

Rats were given fixed-time, 1-min food-pellet delivery sessions, for 3 h every day, which resulted in over drinking (schedule-induced polydipsia). In previous research, groups of animals came to prefer solutions of cocaine or lidocaine to concurrently presented water, if the drugs were first offered in a glucose/saccharin vehicle, which was then gradually eliminated, so that the choice became a drug solution in water vehicle versus water. In the present experiment, the same procedure produced a preference for 0.025 mg/ml quinine solution to water, indicating that a bitter solution that was not a topical anesthetic agent could come to be preferred. After establishing preference for quinine solution, it was possible to gradually remove quinine while increasing phencyclidine (PCP) concentration to produce preference for 0.075 mg/ml PCP solution, and similarly to produce subsequent preference for 0.1 mg/ml caffeine solution, although not for all animals. For additional groups, drinking either 0.15 mg/ml PCP or 0.1 mg/ml caffeine, while gradually reducing the glucose/saccharin vehicle to water vehicle was a less successful procedure for establishing the respective drug preferences. The latter result suggests that first instituting a preference for quinine solution to water facilitated the later establishment of preferences for PCP and caffeine solutions.